Again this from Food magazine. This dish has all of my favorite ingredients together – liempo, chilis and coconuts. What I don’t like is the bago-ong or shrimp paste. I don’t know why, but shrimp paste is one of my pet peeves (I don’t eat bagoong with kare-kare). So no pork binagoongan for me. But I do like the Cebuano fish paste called guinamos. Anyway, Bicol Express calls for bagoong, which in the Bicol region is call balao. To get my way around the bagoong part, I washed the bagoong several times to get rid of the smell and the saltiness. This time I could live with it.

Bicol Express
- based on Food Magazine (Aug 2008), with modifications

500 grams liempo, cut into cubes
4 cups coconut milk
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 inch know ginger, chopped
1 medium size onion, chopped
2 cups coconut cream
500 grams siling haba
1/2 cup shrimp paste

Boil liempo, coconut milk, garlic, ginger and onion until pork is tender. Stir occasionally to prevent the coconut milk from curdling. Meanwhile, wash the shrimp paste to get rid of excess salt. Slice chilis, removing seeds. Soak chilis twice in salted water.When pork is tender, add the coconut cream and bagoong. Simmer for five minutes while occasionally stirring the pot. Add the chilis and simmer until sauce has thickened. It actually depends on you if you want the sauce be oily or not. If not, just simmer till chilis has cooked. Adjust taste with salt.

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